The present invention relates to the field of digital computer systems, and more specifically, to operating a secure storage device.
Distributed computer systems provide increasingly effective ways of providing numerous types of services. As the complexity and ubiquity of distributed computer systems increases, however, maintaining data security becomes more challenging. There is a constant struggle to address security vulnerabilities at least as fast as they are discovered. This struggle is exacerbated by the speed at which computer systems and their use evolve and the rate at which the stakes increase. At the same time, in many contexts, the security of data is of great importance. Many people, for example, trust companies with data that is intended to be kept private except in relatively few circumstances. Security breaches, consequently, can have harmful effects on an organization's operations, ranging from a loss of trust and goodwill to an inability to do business due to a system malfunction caused by a security breach. For that, secure storage devices such as, e.g., hardware security modules (HSMs) provide a secure data access service to customers via a computing resource provider that remotely hosts various computing resources that are remotely managed and operated by the customers.